United States · Ohio · Cincinnati
CUF, Cincinnati — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Hillside streets climb toward the WLWT TV Tower in CUF, the Cincinnati neighborhood of Clifton Heights, University Heights, and Fairview.
About CUF
Where to stay in CUF
Where you base yourself shapes the visit — here's the character of each area.
CUF puts most of its beds on the University Heights side, along Straight Street, within a walk of the University of Cincinnati. Clifton Heights, east of Ravine Street, is the busier half: West McMillan Street runs to counters, bars, and student flats rather than lobbies. Fairview keeps to houses and hillside steps.
Choose Clifton Heights if you want the campus edge at the end of the block, and Downtown Cincinnati, roughly two miles south, when a full slate of hotel desks matters more.
About CUF
What are the main landmarks in CUF?
CUF gathers its landmarks on two park hilltops and along West McMillan Street. Bellevue Hill Park opens off Ohio Avenue, where a 1955 pavilion spreads a concrete canopy on cantilevers above the old ground of the Bellevue House. From its Daniel J. Ransohoff Overlook the slope falls to Downtown Cincinnati.
Fairview Park holds the western brow. The WLWT TV Tower, a steel lattice raised in 1978, rises from Chickasaw Street. Police Station No. 7, Romanesque brick by Samuel Hannaford and Sons, stands where West McMillan Street meets Ravine Street.
What is the history of CUF?
CUF grew as three hilltop settlements the valley below could reach only by cable. The Bellevue Incline and the Fairview Incline hauled streetcars up the slope, two of the four inclines that carried Cincinnati's cars onto its hills. The Bellevue House stood at the head of the first, and Bellevue Hill Park took its ground in 1955.
Fairview had its own German community. It founded the Fairview German Language School in 1888; the school left for Clifton in 2008. Hughes High School moved into its Clifton Heights building in 1906, named for Thomas Hughes, an English shoemaker whose will left his property to schooling for poor children.
Where is CUF?
CUF wraps the University of Cincinnati on its south and west, bounded by Clifton to the north, Mount Auburn to the east, and Over-the-Rhine and Camp Washington below.
Good for
More areas in Cincinnati
Updated September 2026